AMAC Exclusive – By Shane Harris
The reaction by the left-wing legal establishment, the media, and partisan Democrats to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s move to transport 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, an ultra-wealthy liberal enclave off the coast of Massachusetts, underscores a basic truth about the left that became all too clear during the Trump years: if you threaten their grip on power, every cultural institution and even the legal system will be weaponized to silence you, effectively criminalizing political dissent.
On Tuesday, news broke that a civil rights law firm had filed a class-action lawsuit against DeSantis for the act – the second legal action against him in as many days after Javier Salazar, a sheriff in Bexar County, Texas, with a documented history of supporting Democratic politicians announced that he was also launching a “probe” into whether or not the migrants were “lured under false pretenses” to one of the wealthiest zip codes in the country.
A number of legal experts have already suggested that the lawsuits against DeSantis are legally dubious at best. But as the country has seen with the never-ending string of litigation against former President Donald Trump and his family, the point is not to achieve a conviction – it is to distract from a real issue that Democrats and the media are ignoring (illegal immigration) and delegitimize a political figure who poses a threat to Democrats’ grip on power.
For the left, whether DeSantis actually broke the law is beside the point. By exposing their hypocrisy on immigration and “sanctuary cities” – not to mention their contempt for poor border towns who have had to deal with thousands of migrants, not just 50 – DeSantis has committed the unforgiveable sins of forcing Democrats to confront the consequences of their own policies and making them look foolish to the American people.
The lawsuits were matched by a hysterical response from elected Democrats and the left-wing media, who demanded that DeSantis be arrested and jailed immediately for “kidnapping” and “human trafficking.” Former CNN correspondent Keith Olbermann tweeted that DeSantis’s actions were “federal crimes” and “the sentence is five years – per victim.” One MSNBC guest called on Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland to “bring the full weight and power of the federal government down on [DeSantis].” California Governor Gavin Newsom similarly called for a DOJ investigation into DeSantis. Following news about the lawsuits, Charlie Crist, the Democrat nominee running to unseat DeSantis this November (and currently trailing him by nearly five points in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average) issued a tweet celebrating the investigation, asking “Who else agrees it’s time for Ron DeSantis to get what he deserves?”
The vastly different response to similar actions taken by another Republican governor – Greg Abbott of Texas – illustrates the left’s fear of DeSantis. While DeSantis transporting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard has garnered most of the headlines, Abbott engaged in a similar move last week as well, dropping off two busloads of migrants on Vice President Kamala Harris’s front yard at the Naval Observatory in Washington D.C.
In many respects, Abbott’s move was even more symbolically powerful and embarrassing for Democrats – Harris is ostensibly Biden’s “border czar,” and just last week claimed that “the border is secure.” Moreover, Abbott has been busing thousands of illegal immigrants to self-described “sanctuary cities” like Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York City for weeks with relatively little media fanfare.
To be sure, Abbott has received his share of negative coverage, and even a few lawsuits of his own (although most have been directed at the state of Texas, not Abbott himself). But the vast majority of left-wing outrage has undoubtedly been reserved for DeSantis, who is considered by many to be the most high-profile Republican governor and a future presidential hopeful. Bashing any Republican is fair game for the media, but DeSantis is an especially dangerous threat because he has embraced Trump’s brand of America First politics and has now forced the left to talk about issues they need to hide from the public to have any chance at electoral success this fall.
The lawsuits against DeSantis and breathless media claims that he is a “threat to democracy” and nothing short of a human trafficking mastermind are thus unlikely to subside anytime soon. Just like Democrats have used the sham “January 6 Committee” and now the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid to desperately avoid any mention of inflation, gas prices, crime, or any number of other crises that their policies have caused over the past two years, we might now expect that the discussion will turn to potential criminal convictions of DeSantis to avoid discussing the fact that an estimated 4.9 million people have crossed the border illegally since Biden took office.
But largely thanks to Trump exposing the attacks against him as baseless conspiracies concocted by Democrats and the liberal media – from the fake “Russian collusion” narrative to made-up claims about Vladimir Putin putting bounties on U.S. troops – most Americans look unwilling to buy the media spin. Try as they might, people just aren’t going to believe the line that sending migrants from a third-world country to a posh island paradise that claims to be a “sanctuary jurisdiction” is somehow a human rights violation.
For Republicans elsewhere – including in Congress – the media and Democrat panic over DeSantis’s actions shows that he’s struck a nerve. Just like Trump’s hardline immigration stance helped him secure the White House in 2016, immigration can again be a winning issue this year. As alarming as it may sound, the new rule for Republicans seems to be that if your Democrat opponents are threatening to throw you in jail for exposing their hypocrisy, you are probably winning the debate.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @Shane_Harris_.